Privatization in Austria: Some theoretical reasons and performance measures

The issues of privatization (and sometimes deregulation) have been reviewed in a large literature on the various aspects of privatization, that has emphasized the potential efficiency gains. Hence, we provide some theoretical reasoning why privatization is useful as well as profitable for an economy and empirically present the extent of privatization in Austria and other European Union countries. In order to assess the impact of privatization in Austria on economic performance, we observe cash flows, the employment performance, and the stock-exchange ratings of the privatized formerly state-owned enterprises.